Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Election Year Spin on Social Security

Bernie Sanders' campaign for the White House has
triggered a firestorm of rants, tweets and accusations about Social Security,
thrusting the now seventy year old program to center stage in a forum of election year theatre. Sanders' charges, often wrapped in outright
inaccuracies, are carefully aimed at a demographic the candidate knows to be
voter-ific: aging Baby Boomers. Most, or at least half, of this generation are wholly unprepared for the expenses of retirement, while the other half is,
well, just modestly underfunded. Both will be dependent on Social Security in
varying degrees, a program that is suffering a mid-life crisis of its own.

The purpose of this post is not to offer my opinions
on Social Security, but rather to simply state the facts, as more officially
presented to Congress by the Trustees of the Social Security Administration in
their 2015
Annual Summary on the Social Security and Medicare Programs. Both the
summary and the full report of the Trustees can be easily accessed on the
internet or through the link provided in this post.

Sanders' claim of the "myth of Social Security
insolvency" is quickly followed by accusations that Republicans plan to
"cut benefits" to retirees. Boy, I tell you, it's enough to get a retirees' blood to boil. Then again, maybe that's the point. But in Sanders' attempts to sway public
opinion for his electoral purposes, the blatant misstatement of the
facts surrounding Social Security actually does far more harm than
good for the program and to the millions that depend upon it.

"Republicans are trying to convince voters that Social Security is in
crisis. Let's not kid ourselves: We do have an urgent problem on our hands, but
it's not Social Security. Millions of middle-class Americans are facing a
retirement crisis as a result of inadequate income and growing wealth
inequality. Social Security isn't the problem. It's an essential part of the
solution."

While the Senator is correct about the latter part of his comments, he's dead
wrong about the former. Social Security is most definitely in crisis, at least according to the
Trustees of the Social Security Administration. Perhaps before moving on, we
should spend a moment and define who the Trustees actually are and what their role is in all of this.

By law, there are six Trustees of the Social Security Administration or Trust
Fund. These are, the Secretaries of the Treasury, Departments of Labor,
Health and Human Services and the Commissioner of Social Security. The two
remaining Trustees are public representatives who, along with the
aforementioned cabinet members and Commissioner, are all appointed by the
President, or in this instance, specifically by President Obama, a Democrat. That being said,
it's really not rational to dismiss the comments in the report, or at least not to discount themas a Republican ploy.

Here, then, are direct quotes from the 2015 Trustee report to Congress. Decide for
yourself if Social Security insolvency is a myth, as Senator Sanders argues:

“Social Security and Medicare together accounted for 42% of total Federal
program expenditures in 2014”

“Both Social Security and Medicare will experience cost growth substantially in
excess of GDP through the mid-2030s”

Seems fairly straightforward to me that there's an urgent problem with not just Social
Security, but Disability Insurance and Medicare. Now why would Bernie Sanders be arguing something altogether different?